The Jotun's Daughter

Chapter 1

"Mom?"

I crept quietly along the dark underground tunnel. I knew she had needed me here to retrieve her message, but I had been busy, and I didn't have time to play games today. I twirled the blades in my hands, alert, but annoyed. After everything she had drilled into me, this was what she had asked me to do?

"Seriously? You want to test me now?" I called. She did this often, testing my ability to keep up with her or defend myself. I fingered the sharp edges of the daggers in my palms. They were clean and well-kept, but the material they were made of was without shine.

"I've changed since you last saw me, mother. This is not a good idea," I murmured.

I had changed, even though my mother hadn't been there to witness it. I think she started leaving me for periods of time around the age of five, leaving me alone for sometimes just days, other times weeks, months, until eight months ago she had disappeared entirely. I had assumed she was gone for good, until a note appeared on my desk in the middle of the night instructing me to meet her here. I sighed as I walked forward through the carved, arching cylinder of stone, the passageway ahead of me waiting for me to approach it. I could see enough of the path that I knew what was immediately ahead of me was clear, and I scanned the walls around me for any clues to what my Mother wanted to tell me, but the walls were unmarked.

She did like to bide her time waiting, but really, this was ridiculous. Usually she would have at least left a signal somewhere by now. I notice that the tunnel turned right up ahead; I readied my blades, creeping along the close wall. When I reached the corner, I spun, arms up and muscles tense. But instead of her taunting smile or the swoosh! of her blond hair-opposite my black-I was met with stunning silence.

         Up ahead of me a shaft of light penetrated the darkness, illuminating the dark red floor. Except the floor wasn't red, the floor was stone, and I found myself in disbelief. She wouldn't go this far, and she wouldn't be so careless. I walked slowly up to her, remembering how she could slip into someone else at the blink of an eye; This was certainly no different. Slowly, I reached down, still weary that at any moment the woman who had suddenly reappeared in my life could be about to spring up and attack, testing my abilities once more.

      My eyes caught sight of the spikes sticking out of her stomach and I observed her acting skills. The first time that my mother had faked her own death, I had been seven, and she had chastised me thoroughly for not properly checking for signs of life and having better control over my emotions. I had quickly learned that with her, nothing was as it seemed. As good of a character as she was, I noted the lines in the corner of her eyes; the past few months looked as though they had been catching up to her. I sighed, reaching for her neck and pretending to take her pulse just to satisfy her.

"Come on, no more games," I sighed, resting back into a crouching position, "Let's just get whatever it is you are searching for and get out of here."

No response.

I reached out again, this time to check for a rhythmic beat in her carotid artery. The heart feeds the brain before it feeds anything else. It's easy to slow a pulse down enough that it can't be felt in the radial-or wrist-but it's harder to break the carotid. This time, I froze.

My mother was the best actress I had met-and I knew many. She could disappear or command a crowd in a split second if she ever felt the need. One time, she had taken me to an expensive jewelry store and the clerk put our items "on credit" without a second thought-under a name that wasn't hers and without checking ID, just to show me that she could. When I was younger, there wasn't anything I believed she couldn't do. Now, I know that there are some things in life you usually can't completely fake.